Introduction
When Warner Brothers announced in early January that they are going to release future titles exclusively in the Blu-ray format, most people heralded the end of the high-def format war and all the confusion it has caused. Sure, there are bound to be a few more skirmishes, but realistically, the war is probably over. What does that mean for the consumer? Well, an end to the confusion, of course, and a guarantee that the Blu-ray player you buy now won’t go the route of Beta and become obsolete.

Not so fast. Blu-ray may soon be the only high-def disc format, but early adopters are still taking some risk if they buy a Blu-ray player now. Why? Because most of the players currently on the market don’t exploit the format’s full potential. The average consumer probably isn’t even aware that the Blu-ray player is still a work in progress. First- and second-generation players weren’t required to offer every feature that makes Blu-ray so compelling; yes, you do get a beautiful HD picture, but you may not be able to easily access the higher-resolution soundtracks, and you absolutely won’t be able to display picture-in-picture video commentaries or access any Web-based features on the disc (both of which you can already do on HD DVD, by the way).

Blu-ray players are identified by three profiles – 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0 – that indicate the minimum amount of functionality that must be built into the unit. Of course, manufacturers are free to add more functionality, but many have chosen not to do so thus far. All players released prior to November 1, 2007 were Profile 1.0, which doesn’t require Internet connectivity or the inclusion of secondary video and audio decoders to support PIP commentary. Players released after November 1, 2007 must be Profile 1.1, which means that they must have at least 256 MB of local storage (be it internal or add-in) and contain the decoders needed for PIP. Profile 1.1’s original nickname of “Final Standard Profile” is extremely misleading, since it isn’t the final profile, so you may now hear these players referred to as “Bonus View” or “Picture-in-Picture-enabled” players. Last and best endowed is Profile 2.0, also called Blu-ray-Live, which mandates the inclusion of 1 GB of local storage, secondary A/V decoders, and Internet connectivity.

I give you that brief overview so that the following sentence actually
means something: Panasonic’s $499.95 DMP-BD30 is one of the first
Profile 1.1 players to hit the shelf. Does the fact that it has more
functionality than a Profile 1.0 player automatically make it the one
to buy? That depends on how well it measures up in other areas. Let’s
find out.

Set-up
The DMP-BD30 is almost as slim and light as a standard DVD player.
It sports a simple but attractive all-black design, with two flip-down
doors on the front panel. The first hides the disc drive, which
supports Blu-ray, DVD and CD playback. The second door covers the
transport controls, the large front-panel display and an SD card slot.
You can still see the display through the flip-down door’s window; its
messages are of the basic Play, Stop, and No Disc variety. The
inclusion of the SD card slot is what allows the DMP-BD30 to meet
the Profile 1.1 spec for 256 MB of local storage; if your still or
video camera uses SD cards, you can easily pop them into this player to
view jpegs and AVCHD video. Transport controls include play, stop,
pause and two buttons that pull double duty as
fast-forward/chapter-forward and reverse/chapter-back. Unfortunately,
there’s no front-panel button to switch the player’s output resolution.
Admittedly, the average user isn’t going to change resolutions as much
as a video reviewer like me will, but having a hard button provides an
easy fix for anyone who encounters resolution compatibility issues with
the display.

The back panel includes all of the desired video and audio connections:
HDMI 1.3, component video, S-video, composite video, coaxial and
optical digital audio and 7.1-channel analog audio outputs. Sadly,
Panasonic has opted not to include an Ethernet port, which isn’t
mandated until Profile 2.0. The supplied remote puts a lot of black
buttons on a black background and offers no backlighting, but at least
the important buttons have different shapes and are intuitively
arranged around the jog wheel, which is placed right where my thumb
naturally falls. It has Top menu and Pop-Up menu buttons, but oddly, no
dedicated menu button. The Status button provides resolution output and
chapter/title information, but not the bit rate at which the content is
encoded (that’s a geeky pleasure of mine). The Display button pulls up
audio and video sub-menus that indicate, among other things, soundtrack
type and encoding method (VC-1, MPEG-4, or MPEG-2).

The DMP-BD30’s menu design is clean and straightforward, and the
remote’s Return button makes navigating those menus a bit easier. When
you first power up the player, the Easy Setting process lets you select
onscreen language and TV aspect ratio (16:9 is the default option).
More advanced set-up options are accessible via the Set-up button at
the bottom left corner of the remote. The TV/Device Connection menu is
where you’ll find options to set output resolution for HDMI and
component video and, oddly, to choose between two- and multi-channel
audio output for the analog audio connections. For HDMI, the output
resolution options are auto (default), 480p, 720p, 1080i and 1080p.
There’s no Source Direct option to automatically output the disc’s
native resolution, but there is a separate menu choice to enable the
player to output 1080p/24, the native resolution of most Blu-ray films.
Other HDMI set-up parameters include the ability to change between a
standard and enhanced RGB output range, the option to turn on EZ-Sync
(Panasonic’s name for HDMI-CEC, which allows one remote to control
devices connected via HDMI), and the ability to turn HDMI audio on or
off (wisely, it’s on by default). For component video, output
resolution options are 480i, 480p, 720p and 1080i. As with most
players, the resolution of SD DVDs is limited to 480i or 480p. For the
analog audio set-up, if you choose multi-channel output, the player
allows you to set level and delay for all 7.1 speakers.

The rest of the audio settings are more logically located in the Audio
menu. The DMP-BD3030 doesn’t have its own internal Dolby TrueHD and
DTS-HD decoders, so if you don’t have a new A/V receiver capable of
decoding these formats, the best you’re going to get out of the DMP-BD30 is multi-channel PCM or basic DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1.
If you do have a receiver with Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD decoding, the
player will pass these formats in their native bit stream over HDMI so
that the receiver can decode them. I had Pioneer’s new VSX-91TXH on
hand to test this very process. The DMP-BD30’s audio-set-up
options are slightly more advanced than those of other Blu-ray players
I’ve used, which require some knowledge and effort on your part to
configure them properly. You can designate either PCM or bit stream
output for each of the four major soundtrack options – Dolby Digital,
Dolby Digital Plus/TrueHD, DTS and DTS-HD – so you can configure each
one based on your receiver’s capabilities. By default, all four formats
are set to be output as PCM. If you plan to use the analog audio
outputs or to connect this player directly to your TV, these settings
are fine. However, if you plan to mate the player with a receiver,
you’ll probably at least want to set Dolby Digital and DTS for bit
stream. Because I had a compatible receiver on hand, I set all four
options for bit stream to let the Pioneer handle all of the decoding.
If you plan to use the DMP-BD30’s optical or coaxial digital audio
output, you should change all four options to bit stream, which allows
you to listen to both standard- and high-resolution Dolby/DTS
soundtracks as basic Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS. In a nutshell, if you
want to exploit the full audio capabilities of this player and the
Blu-ray format, you should upgrade to a Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HS receiver.

Because this is a Profile 1.1 player with secondary decoders, the Audio
menu also includes an option labeled Blu-ray Video Secondary Audio,
with on/off options. Secondary audio can sometimes refer to the sound
cues in a disc’s interactive menus, or to the audio soundtrack in a PIP
feature or commentary. When Blu-ray Video Secondary Audio is turned
off, you won’t hear these audio cues, but the soundtrack will be output
at its maximum resolution. If you turn this option on, the player mixes
in the secondary audio cues, but converts high-resolution audio tracks
to Dolby Digital. The new Sunshine Blu-ray (20th Century Fox) has a DTS
HD soundtrack and several PIP features. With the secondary audio
function turned on, I could hear the PIP audio, but the soundtrack came
through as Dolby Digital. Even with a Blu-ray that doesn’t have PIP
features, like Reservoir Dogs (Lionsgate Home Entertainment), the
player output the DTS-HD track as Dolby Digital when I enabled the
secondary audio feature.

The DMP-BD30 includes a number of additional A/V set-up features,
such as picture settings (brightness, contrast, etc), black-level
control, dynamic range compression and PCM down-conversion. I left all
of these at their default settings. The menu also gives you the option
to dim (but not turn off) the large front-panel display, and you can
decide if you want the blue SD card light on the front face to be on,
off, or illuminate only when a card is inserted.